The End

Another year comes to a close. 2019 will likely not be a very memorable year. It was a year of holding one’s breath. A year when many things almost happened, but didn’t quite manage to break into our existential plane. Recession was threatened, flirted with even. Bull markets looked old and tired, but ended up making new highs. Brexit deadlines were made and missed. New wars were proposed, but didn’t quite erupt.

It is probably all for the best. All these things sound rather unpleasant, besides, 2019 is odd and not catchy or memorable like 2020. 2020 is a nice round even number. For this post, being at the close of the year, let us look back at 2019 and forward to 2020.

Let us start with an issue close to home, the political turmoil in Malta. The PM deciding wisely that he will not resign in disgrace in 2019, but with dignity in 2020. An atrocious state of affairs enabled by a weak and divided opposition. The current trajectory seems set to pass the baton to a PM-approved successor which will make it very hard to ever see the current PM in his rightful place - in prison for his crimes. Going back all the way to my first post (looks like I guessed right that it was about Azeri oil) I think my main point is more important than ever and still completely absent from the discussion; are we just going to continue hoping for better leaders or are we going to neuter the executive to make such corruption impossible? Don’t hold your breath.

Onto the Brexit election. Again I was right that the path of least resistance, delay, would be the outcome. This time however, it seems that Labour's suicidally bad campaign will finally deliver a majority that can move forward on this issue. But my hopes for the UK are not high. Listening to the candidates promise to spend millions and millions of pounds more on everything when the Kingdom is already basically bankrupt confirmed that thought. Even the Tory’s relatively conservative spending plan will blow the deficit out of the water. People are heralding an end to the decade of “austerity” which has been an Orwellian joke, with government spending increasing every single year of this supposed “austerity”. I wonder what profligacy will look like. I guess we will soon find out.

Another election slowly moving forward across the Atlantic looks set to make another prediction come true: Trump will be a one-termer. Despite the best efforts by Democrats to appoint someone as unappealing and unelectable as possible, Trump's unpopularity is showing in the polls. Special elections have also not gone Trump’s way, even in deeply red states. Trump’s impending defeat will be more evidence that the government statistics are wonky and the true state of the US economy is pretty much as Trump found it and getting worse.

The above is also evidenced by continued crisis-style action by central banks. The new central bank chairs will continue this reckless, ignorant disastrous macro policy until they literally have no other choice. The money tsunami will continue to inflate assets and will start to hit commodities and even consumer prices in the near future. This is one prediction that keeps stubbornly taking its time to come true.

The EU, if it has enough time in between crises, will continue and redouble its efforts to ruin technology and any competitiveness in the Eurozone economy. The UK’s exit will take the breaks off any plans to clamp down on financial freedom. In the meantime, public opinion having turned away from big tech means that more pan-nationalistic lawsuits against foreign tech companies will continue, along with completely asinine regulation that might even end up driving the real internet in Europe underground.

The above forces, particularly the economic malaise hidden beneath government numbers which are hedonically adjusted to death, the central bank-induced inflation that destroys the middle-class and tired intergovernmental institutions that stomp around like dinosaurs will likely make 2020 another year of populism, political upset, protest, violence and crisis.
Nuremberg December 13th, 2019

 TLDR: 2019 will not be as memorable as 2020